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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24768643">Peter Parker and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernMutiny/pseuds/ModernMutiny'>ModernMutiny</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Doombots, Gen, Identity Reveal, Peter Parker Has a Bad Day, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), You'll see what I mean, but there's some residual tension, but they've mostly made up, like...avengers tower 2012 style made up</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:34:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,033</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24768643</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernMutiny/pseuds/ModernMutiny</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Parker's not having a good day by any stretch of the word, and all he wants is to lie down and take a well-deserved nap. Then Doombots take over the Roxxon building, and he doesn't have his suit, and somehow he's outed to the man he'd spent most of his childhood alternatively in awe and terror of: Captain Steven Rogers.<br/>Peter Parker, he realizes a little too late, should have just stayed in bed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Peter Parker &amp; Steve Rogers, Peter Parker &amp; Tony Stark, Steve Rogers &amp; Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>124</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Peter Parker and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>you ever just see a comic someone drew and even though it's ass 'o' clock in the morning you just have to write it? yeah, this is that. I took some liberties, but this fic is heavily inspired by a little comic I saw on tumblr by dakt37, which you can find here: https://tonystark-616.tumblr.com/post/614413499524939776/dakt37-if-you-need-me-ill-be-over-here-in</p><p>EDIT: I fucking spelt terrible wrong and no one corrected me and i just,,,,, thanks yall for reading anyway when the TITLE WAS SPELT WRONG<br/>But no seriously thanks for reading I appreciate you, reader. Yes, you specifically. Thank you.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Peter was having a really, truly, spectacularly shitty day.</p><p>First he was late to homeroom because he had been out all night rounding up some really dumb villain named Paste Pot Pete (he did try to tell the guy to change his moniker because really? How was he supposed to intimidate people with a name bullies probably called him on the playground in kindergarten) and he kind of got a little stuck to his alarm clock and doorknob and sink. It reminded him a lot of his first couple days after the Oscorp field trip, actually, when he had no idea what was happening with his powers, but this time it couldn’t be controlled by calming down, since it was literal glue residue sticking him to everything.</p><p>And so he had to take ten minutes and try and melt all the stuff off in the shower with hot water, which made him late for the bus, and his suit was still all sticky because he wasn’t going to shower with it and it wasn’t like he could throw it in the washing machines in the basement of his building, so he couldn’t even swing to school real quick.</p><p>Once he got to school (only fifteen minutes late, because at least the second bus was on time) he was so flustered he grabbed the wrong books from his locker and didn’t have the right stuff for Spanish class, then he failed his calculus exam because he forgot to study, then Flash noticed he hadn’t had time to get his hair to lay flat that morning after his shower, so it was all curly and Flash started calling him “little orphan Annie” and “Shirley Temple.”</p><p>Normally Ned would have been around to make him feel better, but it was Friday and he was out that day for a long weekend at his aunt’s house in Jersey. MJ, as good of a friend as she was, hated confrontation, preferring to sit back and watch the fallout instead. He didn’t exactly blame her – most people, given then chance, didn’t jump into fights if they didn’t know they could win. Peter was not most people, but that didn’t mean that MJ had to throw in with Flash just because Peter fucked up.</p><p>So now Peter was stuck with brand new nicknames and no one to back him up. MJ did give him a sketch of Flash after lunch was over, of the bully with a sneer on his face and a fried egg falling down his other cheek – literal egg on his face, because she loved weird phrases like that – and a quick squeeze to his wrist along with the affirmation that they were graduating soon, and hopefully he would never have to deal with Flash again. While he appreciated the gesture, it didn’t make a dent into what was shaping up to be a truly horrible day.</p><p>At least his last classes of the day went normally. Well, as normal as a superhero teenager at Midtown High could get, Peter supposed. A few experiments blew up in chem class, a rogue robot started chasing some hapless freshman down the hallway in passing time, and some slacker whose name Peter didn’t know spent most of physics class trying to convince the teacher that the formula she was teaching was wrong (it wasn’t, it was just a misunderstanding about what the variables stood for, but Peter was too worn out to try and mediate for them) which lasted most of the hour.</p><p>Once school was out and Flash drove off in his dad’s fancy car (with a few more passing taunts at Peter) and MJ left with her usual sarcastic joke and the rest of the school cleared out, Peter grabbed his old suit from underneath the lockers to replace his glue-ridden new one for the time being, and head out with the intent of getting back to the apartment and passing out for a few hours while the big league heroes too care of everything for a while.<br/>
Then, just as he was walking into Delmar’s for his regular after-school snack, the Roxxon building in the Financial District blew up, and Peter knew he wasn’t getting that nap or, even more disappointing, that sandwich.</p><p>He popped his earbuds out of his ears and stuffed them in his pocket as he jogged to the nearest alley, sighing. One day was all he asked. One day without a huge explosion or a building fire or some new badly-named supervillain in a furry costume popping up out of nowhere. It was actually starting to stress him out how many furries turned out to be evil – Rhino, Doc Ock, Chameleon, Vulture, Lizard, the list went on. It made him warier than was probably fair of the sophomore that sat a few seats down from Peter at lunch with a fox tail attached to her belt and a cat ear headband every day. These clowns were starting to make him biased now, and that was probably the last straw.</p><p>So honestly as bad as his day was turning out, he reasoned to himself as he ducked behind a dumpster to change, if this wasn’t the work of some dude named the Kangaroo or something, then he’d probably go easy on them. Easier than his day warranted, at least.</p><p>Then he noticed his mask wasn’t in his bag.</p><p>His new Stark suit was still at the apartment, five blocks away in the opposite direction of the smoking Roxxon building, since he didn’t want it to make a gluey mess all over the inside of his backpack. He thought his old suit had the mask intact, but then he remembered that Mr. Stark had asked for it as a sort of display in the Avengers Museum in Stark Tower as a reminder that everyone had to start somewhere, and Peter never thought he would need to use it again since he had the new suit so he said yes. Stark Tower, even if he were willing to steal from such a highly secured museum in the middle of the day, was even further from his apartment.</p><p>Peter rubbed at his eyes in frustration, then rummaged through his bag to see if there was anything he could use to hide his identity until he could reach Mr. Stark who probably had some sort of better solution. Luckily, at the bottom of his bag, was a surgical mask that May had probably accidentally dropped in there after a long shift, thinking the bag was hers. It covered the entire bottom half of his face – and smelled way too strongly of May’s perfume to not give Peter an almost immediate headache – and with that and his curly hair that was almost unrecognizable even to himself, he should probably be okay. At least, he’d be okay to swing down and help out for a second until it was all under control and he could leave the situation in Mr. Stark’s capable hands while he passed out on the nearest couch, wherever that may be.</p><p>He changed into the rest of his costume as quickly as he could, snapping on his web-shooters last. He threw his backpack on his back, not wanting to risk losing it this time since it held his only change of clothes, given they couldn’t fit under his old suit, and all his homework for the weekend that Ned was too far away in Jersey to get him copies of if he lost. Peter sighed one last time, imagining how stupid he must look in his sweatpants tucked into his socks, a badly-cut sweatshirt with a spray-painted logo, a used bright blue surgical mask, frizzy unruly hair, and a hot pink backpack (May said the more he lost, the more garish-looking his new ones were going to be. He was pretty sure she only said that because they couldn’t afford to buy him yet another one and she happened to find the pink one in the lost and found at the hospital, but he didn’t have any real proof of that except for May’s badly-hidden smirk whenever she saw him walk to the bus with it on and the fact that there was a faint stain of the name Blaire written in washable marker on the inside of the left strap that he assumed May didn’t see before she gave it to him).</p><p>It only took him a few minutes to swing over to the center of the whole mess, and once he did he realized the whole situation was much worse than he thought it was. Not only was a good chunk of the building gone, the rest of it that was still intact looked like it had about a million man-sized cockroaches scuttling up the side of it. Getting closer, he realized they were Doombots, not cockroaches, but the difference was basically negligible anyhow.</p><p>Iron Man was in the middle of it all, back to back with War Machine as they blasted the crowds of Doombots that scrambled over each other to grab the flying suits by the ankles to pull them down. They were unsuccessful in that, luckily, but it was a close call. Captain America was throwing Black Widow around towards different crowds of the bots, Thor was lining them all up like bowling pins at any given opportunity just to throw his hammer and knock them all down with gaping holes in their chests, and Hawkeye was out of sight except for the odd arrow that flew in to electrocute a group of them whenever they clumped up too tightly. Even Falcon was in the fight, circling the building to slice as many of the bots as he could in half with the edges of his wings, and every once in awhile the Winter Soldier would jump out onto Sam’s back to catch a ride to a new floor. Even from half a block away, Peter could see the murderous look on Sam’s face whenever Bucky did that.</p><p>As overwhelming as it all looked, it did seem to be in control for the moment. That was, until Peter noticed the crowd of a few dozen civilians that were being corralled out of the way by a circle of Doombots surrounding them, presumably to gather a handful of hostages while the Avengers weren’t looking. The civilians were fighting back like true New Yorkers, throwing shoes and hot dogs at the offending robots, but they weren’t making a dent. Peter was just lucky that the Doombots didn’t seem to care about the stuff being flung at them, because if it started to make them angry then they were in deep trouble.</p><p>Peter swung in low once he got close enough, jumping onto the back of one of the bots to grab onto its head and jerk it up and off its body before moving onto the one next to it. If he could pick off a few in one area, then maybe he could make a gap big enough for the civilians to escape. Probably. Even he had to admit that sleep-deprived-Peter’s ideas weren’t always very well thought out, but the plan seemed sound enough to dive in on it, especially since without his suit he didn’t have any coms or any way to really communicate with the rest of the team. So, sleep-deprived-Peter’s plan it was.</p><p>“You know, consent is really important, guys.” Peter quipped as he tore off the arm of one Doombot to bat at another with it like the Met’s newest slugger. “I don’t know what they teach you in Latveria or wherever Doctor Doom is from, but scaring people into a corner isn’t really considered polite over here in America.”</p><p>The Doombots were starting to catch onto his idea and close ranks, getting closer to the people inside. This wasn’t working fast enough for him to keep up, there was no way he could break the circle and keep it open long enough to get the people out before they close ranks tight enough that they would crush the civilians. One of the Doombots grabbed at his mask and pulled it off before he could react to the twinge of his spidey-sense, and Peter turned his head away from the view of the civilians enough that they couldn’t see his face straight on, but didn’t abandon the Doombots just yet. If his identity had to be called into question to save a few dozen people from being beheaded or whatever Doom did to his hostages, then so be it.</p><p>That being said, he wasn’t exactly going to flaunt his unmasked face around while at least a few of the hostages were probably filming everything out of a hard-earned instinct to take video when trouble started, courtesy of the shitty way the NYPD treated people. God, the world was a nightmare.</p><p>“What did I just say about consent?” Peter shouted at the Doombot that caught his mask, even though there was exactly zero evidence that its processing was at all separate from the rest of them. “That’s it, I’m pulling out the big guns, now. Time to call in an angry dad.”</p><p>He flipped towards Steve without looking back, hoping the civilians didn’t hate him too much for leaving them alone even if just for a second to grab reinforcements. They didn’t seem to be in immediate danger, though, cementing Peter’s theory that they were hostages to be cashed in when convenient, but it was still a shitty thing to do. It was the only choice he really had at this point, though, if he wanted to both save them and have a chance at keeping his identity and the people he cared about safe.</p><p>Cap looked like he was in the eye of the storm, with piles of downed Doombots creating a circle around him like ragdolls on the pavement. He was looking around at the rest of the battle, assessing, posturing like his life depended on it with a fist on his hip and his shield at the ready in front of his puffed-up chest. Peter had the feeling that he practiced a lot to get that to be his default stance. That, or the suit made him feel all heroic and that’s just what he thought heroic looked like. Peter felt that, his regular posture was probably textbook for back problems, but in the spidey suit he probably looked a good inch or two taller just because he stood straight up with confidence.</p><p>Peter ignored the posturing for the most part – though he did make a mental note to bring it up the next time Mr. Stark was in a bad mood to make him feel better – and landed on Steve’s shield with a crouch.</p><p>“Captain Rogers!” He shouted, just in case Steve thought he was a bot or something. “You’ve gotta come quick, there’s a bunch of civilians trapped and-“</p><p>“Spider-man?” Steve squinted hard under his cowl, frowning at Peter. “Christ Almighty.”</p><p>Looking back, Peter chalked up his lack of comprehension to the sleep deprivation. “Yeah, I know, it’s bad and I need your help to get them out before Doom starts hurting them-“</p><p>“You’re like twelve!”</p><p>Peter blinked, tilting his head. “I- what? I mean, I’m sixteen and I…what?”</p><p>“I thought you were just short!” Steve’s eyes were so big that Peter almost couldn’t see any skin around them through the eyeholes in his cowl. They almost looked like his shield, all blue and tinged with red at the edges – was he not sleeping? Mr. Stark should definitely look into that. “Who authorized you for missions? Why aren’t you in school?”</p><p>Peter was suddenly struck by the overlapping images of the Captain America in front of him, shocked and a little panicked and oh so very human, compared with the Captain America he grew up with on school tapes, always confident and put together and knowing exactly what’s happening and what to do at all times. He did the math in his head real quick and holy shit Steve was only like 30. Ned’s older brother was only three years younger than Captain America and he mostly just sat around playing video games all day in his shitty apartment in Brooklyn after delivering pizzas.</p><p>There was more shouting behind him, and Peter was pulled back to reality. He could confront Captain America’s mortality after they dealt with rescuing the actual human hostages. He jerked a thumb back towards the circle of Doombots he left behind. “Sir, can you lecture me later? There’s like, civilians and stuff…”</p><p>Steve’s eyes suddenly got intense. “You should be ‘civilians and stuff!’”</p><p>After the day Peter had had, he really didn’t possess the patience to deal with this. As much as he admired Captain America, and as much as he would probably regret it later, there was a time and place to berate someone trying to help people in trouble, and that time was after the danger was gone.</p><p>“Steve!” Peter shouted, grabbing the man forcefully by the shoulder, still perched on his shield. “People are in danger. Yell at me later, I don’t care, but help me save them now.”</p><p>Steve’s face settled into a quiet determination. “You’re right, we’ll discuss this later.” There was a trace of a threat lying under his words, but Peter didn’t have time to deal with it just then.</p><p>Peter dropped off the shield and stood tall, hands on his hips. He just hoped he didn’t look as awkward as he felt now that his righteous indignation was gone. “Cool, they’re behind me and surrounded and very angry.”</p><p>“They’re New Yorkers faced with someone doing something stupid,” Steve shook his head, tightening the strap on his shield as he stalked towards the problem, “Of course they’re angry.”</p><p>--</p><p>He really should have swung away while he still had the chance, but the apartment was miles away and Mr. Stark offered him a place on the couch in the workshop to take a nap and Peter really didn’t have the strength to turn down a warm mostly-comfortable spot to lie down at that moment. Peter also ignored all sense when he was low on sleep, so really there was no avoiding the situation regardless.</p><p>He had barely stumbled into the penthouse, dead on his feet and only barely avoiding faceplanting when his socked feet slipped on the waxed floors, when Steve came up behind him with a heavy hand on Peter’s shoulder.</p><p>“You did good out there, kid.” Steve said, sounding as tired as Peter felt.</p><p>“Thanks Mr. Captain America, sir.”</p><p>“But that’s the problem.” The hand on his shoulder stopped moving with him, sending Peter into a clumsy spin to face Steve’s star-spangled chest. Peter dragged his weary eyes up to meet Steve’s gaze, resolutely not staring at the absolute crow’s nest that was Steve’s helmet hair. “You’re just a kid, and as much as I value your help in the field, I don’t feel comfortable having a kid out there on the front lines.”</p><p>Anger bubbled up in Peter’s chest unnecessarily, making him feel a little queasy. It was his fight with Mr. Stark all over again, except this time he didn’t do anything wrong. “You were fine with it until today,” Peter bit out between clenched teeth, “So it’s not my skills or my performance you have a problem with, just my face.”</p><p>“Cut the attitude, kid.” Steve snapped back in a tone that cut any responses off at the knees. “Like I said, you’re good at the job, but you’re too young for this. Every day is life or death, and I’m not going to be responsible for the death of some teenager because he bit off more than he could chew without thinking things through.”</p><p>All of Peter’s anger left him at the tone of Steve’s voice – commanding and toeing the line of threatening, the voice he used when he fought against Tony trying to keep the peace with the accords, the voice he used when he lied to Mr. Stark about his parents, taking everyone else’s decisions into his own hands. There was no arguing with that voice, not even Mr. Stark had a good defence against it, and Peter found himself cowing and curling away from the larger man against his best judgment. He’d faced a thousand-foot drop without a parachute, taking down an airplane in midair, but something about disappointing Captain America got under his skin in a way no villain ever would or could.</p><p>Steve was pacing now, making points that Peter was trying really hard not to listen to so that he didn’t have to hear how much Captain America, every kid’s childhood hero, thought Peter was too incompetent to follow in his footsteps.</p><p>Steve stopped, rounding on Peter with a finger pointed straight between Peter’s eyes. “And another thing! I-“</p><p>“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” </p><p>Peter almost jumped onto the ceiling at the sound of another angry voice in the conversation – he grew up with one of the coolest aunts he could ask for, he wasn’t accustomed to any large men yelling at him outside of battle, especially not two in one go – but then Mr. Stark cut between Peter and Steve, shielding Peter with his body. Not that he could do much physically – he was wearing just a wrinkled t-shirt and jeans, not even socks, as he faced down a fully-armoured super soldier – but the reprieve from Steve’s radiating disappointment put Peter at ease anyway.</p><p>Tony got up in Steve’s face, pointing at him in the same way Steve had been pointing at Peter. “How dare you lecture my kid? He did a stand-up job out there even without a suit or all the awesome gear you seem to take for granted, so give the kid a break. You started on your crusade when you were just a kid, too, so you can get off your damn high horse and remember next time you want to kick the puppy that he can bench press more semi-trucks than you can and he doesn’t even need someone else’s shield or uniform or a whole squad of back-up dancers behind him to give the bad guys nightmares.”</p><p>Steve, from what little view Peter had over Tony’s shoulder, looked suitably chastised. So much so that Peter almost missed the softly confused way he repeated Tony’s earlier words, mouthing ‘your…kid?’ with a tiny frown between his eyebrows.</p><p>Peter didn’t have any time to dwell on that though before Tony spun to face Peter, rounding in on him next. “And you! How dare you let some playground outcast ruin my suit and not even tell me?”</p><p>“Oh geez,” Peter whispered, shoulders falling. He should have known Mr. Stark was going to be mad about that.</p><p>“He doesn’t have a halfway decent name!” Tony ranted on, pacing in small circles between Peter and Steve, who was still standing there looking like a lightbulb just went off in his head. “Paste Pot Pete? Sounds like something I called you when you somehow dumped hot glue all over Dum-E’s gears when he was disassembled for cleaning.”</p><p>“I didn’t-“</p><p>“I didn’t even think it was possible to ‘accidentally’ get that much hot glue over anything, with how hard it is to get out of the stupid craft guns, and yet somehow-”</p><p>“It was an accident, Mr. Stark, I swear! I was just-“</p><p>Tony cut him off with a wave of his hand. “No, I don’t want to hear it, that’s in the past. What I do want to hear about is that hot pink Bratz Doll backpack situation you’ve got going on there, and how that correlates with the jammies and the lack of mask you’ve got going on over here.” Tony gestured up and down Peter’s body with an open hand and a twinkle of mischief behind his eyes. Something told Peter that Mr. Stark wasn’t angry, not really, and that somehow a copy of this whole event was going to be saved in FRIDAY’s hard drive somewhere Peter could never find it.</p><p>Yeah, Peter had a feeling it was going to be a bad day today.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Where is Bruce during this, you might ask? Idk, probably doing some sort of humanitarian aid thing or just sitting in his room meditating while listening to opera or something. I forgot to include him and was honestly too tired to write him in afterwards.</p><p>Also yes, I'm well aware that my sentences read like I spent the entirety of my formative years consuming nothing but Charles Dickens' and William Faulkner's winding ten-page sentences, but given that I am a recent graduate with a degree in Literature, some of that was bound to sink in. This is un-beta-ed so if any of the sentences get a little too unbearably long let me know and I can go back through and chop them up to be a little easier to sink your teeth into.</p><p>But regardless, I hope you enjoyed (especially if you enjoyed it enough to comment/give kudos, wink wink)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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